


a little sympathy (I hope you can show me)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 02, Undercover Jemma Simmons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22636117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: An undercover agent falling out of contact is never a good sign.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 7
Kudos: 100





	a little sympathy (I hope you can show me)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [where this road is supposed to lead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12492308) by [shineyma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma). 



> Title from Alec Benjamin's "let me down slowly"
> 
> I borrowed an element of one of shineyma's fics for this and if you've read that one you'll know immediately what it is. She very kindly let me steal it without even knowing what it was because she is the best.

Agent Morse is, to say the least, surprised to see him when she walks into the room. Phil wonders idly if it’s due to their previous agreement that he would be low-to-zero contact while she was in the field or the fact of this being a women’s restroom. Either way, she recovers quickly and has the sense to try to cover with the waitress who helpfully showed her in.

“We’ll be fine, Palamas,” Phil says before she can get out more than a syllable.

Despite the reassurance, Palamas gives Morse one last look before heading back out to finish her shift.

For all Morse’s composure, the silence Phil lets stand after Palamas’ departure obviously gets to her as only five seconds pass before she says, “We had an agreement.”

“We did,” Phil allows. He’d pulled back on contact with Jemma, trusting her to use the more covert methods he’d taught her, and also trusting that Morse’s new status within Hydra would mean someone would have eyes on her regularly. Phil didn’t expect the drop in contact to be this complete however. “But things changed. The red light camera on her corner hasn’t picked her up in days and the landlady has her apartment listed on Craigslist. There’s been a development and you failed to inform me of it.”

To her credit, Morse looks somewhat green. That could just be the terrible lighting in here or her own fear of reprisal, but Phil hopes she’s the sort of person to feel genuine guilt.

“She was exposed to something—some experiment they were running, I don’t know the details. The lab’s been locked up tight, only Whitehall allowed in. They thought she was fine at first but then I guess she started showing symptoms.”

“Symptoms of what? Was it a disease?” For a moment he’s back on the Bus, in the lab, watching that damn surgical clamp float through the air and knowing that he might be the last person to speak to Jemma face-to-face. She was so young. And, emotional toll aside, she’s not much older now.

“I don’t think so. They weren’t worried about transmission. But the agents I’ve spoken to since say she was growing increasingly erratic, almost hysterical sometimes. On her last mission she got so bad she demanded they leave men behind, abandon them to the Gifted they’d been trying to rope in. Turns out they were already dead, but that was the last straw for Bakshi.”

Phil hesitates before asking this next question, knowing that the answer just might be his last straw. “Is she dead?”

Morse hesitates long enough for Phil’s heart to clench painfully in his chest. “No,” she says finally and Phil can breathe again. “They locked her up. She’s got her own rooms, her own lab. Trouble is she can’t leave them.”

A lab, Phil thinks. That means whatever’s happened to her, she’s still able to work, and it’s no surprise Whitehall would keep her for her mind if nothing else. That’s why Phil sent her undercover in the first place.

This was always a possibility, he reminds himself. He knew it from the start. It’s why he and Melinda spent so long debating, unsure whether it was worth the risk.

“I’ve been trying to reach her,” Morse says, sounding almost desperate for his approval, “but they’re limiting the pool of agents allowed anywhere near her. I just need more time to-”

“You’re dismissed.” He needs to get back to base; this isn’t news he can deliver over radio, much as he’d like to. Melinda is not going to like this. She’s been as worried about Jemma’s disappearance as he has—the extra drills she’s been putting Skye through are evidence of that—and this news isn’t going to help matters.

There’s a plan for this. One he and Melinda talked about and debated at length prior to sending Jemma in. The possibility of having to implement it was enough they almost pulled the mission a dozen times.

He really wishes they had now.

“Um.” Morse is still here. She points to the stalls. “I did come in here for a reason.”

“Oh. Right. Could you…?” He motions to the door. After a quick check and an all-clear, he slips into the narrow hall and out the restaurant’s back door. It’s only the necessity of speed while this close to Hydra’s main headquarters that has him hurrying. If it were up to him, he’d drag his feet all the way back to the Playground.

*****

Despite what is no doubt being said of her, Jemma is quite sensible. She was confused at first, as anyone would be, and more than a little overwhelmed, but with a little time to adjust and some healthy isolation thrown in, she’s recovered quite nicely.

The only trouble, as far as she sees it, is that _full_ recovery seems impossible. She scowls at the broken crystal shards across the room. They did this to her.

Well, they and Kenneth’s poorly thought-out hypothesis. But she doesn’t like to blame him, seeing as he didn’t survive the exposure. His corpse, as far as she knows, is still in their old lab. He remains frozen in his final posture of fear and pain, his flesh turned to stone by the same chemical process that changed her.

Unfortunately the change is so complete, down to her very DNA, that discovering _why_ she survived where he didn’t is like throwing darts while blindfolded with not even the vaguest idea of which direction the target might be in. She has her theories of course, not that she will be sharing them with Hydra unless she grows truly desperate for a cure. Besides, there’s no guarantee her theory is any more correct than Kenneth’s was. It could just as easily be the egg she had with her breakfast that morning that saved her as—as she believes to be the case—the Chitauri virus.

Aliens, she thinks somewhat bitterly while looking at the crystals—crystals with no known earthly origin—again. It’s always bloody aliens.

She continues staring, rather than returning to her perusal of Whitehall’s most recent notes, not due to her own consternation but someone else’s. Someone’s coming.

That’s another secret she must keep from her captors. They believe that the walls they’ve placed her behind are protection enough against her newfound powers and they were right—for a time. But as she’s adjusted to them, her powers have grown and now she can feel the approach of two individuals who are not her ever-present guard.

(Sometimes she allows herself to be frightened by the way her powers have advanced and the possibility that leaving these walls has become impossible; that, were she to go outside into the crowds, she would be overwhelmed more completely than she was on the day Whitehall finally ordered her sedated and locked away.

But only sometimes.)

There is a faint beep of warning and a rush of sealed air being released before the door slides open. Without looking, even without her powers to help her, she would know that it is Bakshi. He’s the only one who ever comes inside so easily.

“Good morning, Miss Simmons,” he says in a familiar, almost sing-song tone. The tone is a lie. He’s tense, buzzing so angrily with anticipation she can feel it in her teeth. Whatever his plans are for the day, he must be more worried than usual that it will end in disaster.

Which is precisely why he’s here, why he comes every day to see her, ostensibly to deliver gifts with which to lessen the weight of her isolation. Coffee from that cafe on the next block she so loved, a new film to watch in her downtime, a box of imported chocolates. He wants her to like him despite his complicity in her imprisonment and comes every day, both to give her the gifts and, more importantly, to shake her hand and know whether she sees death in his future.

Knowing the routine well after all this time, she turns to greet him with a smile that matches his own for warmth, but finds that rather than approaching her with a gift and an open hand, he is standing back. The reason why becomes immediately apparent and she finds herself standing somewhat dumbly with her own hand raised.

“Simmons.”

Her first thought is that she never understood before how _complete_ Ward’s cover was. Never before has she felt such a clear _desire for calm_. It’s so complete that it becomes calmness itself and Jemma feels the reactionary racing of her heart begin to subside as the foreign emotion sinks into her skin.

“Ward,” she says because she must say something. “You’re-” here, free, surprisingly unbroken for a man who just escaped an inescapable prison cell- “alive.”

His smile is easy, friendly, and as complete as his calm. She feels those friendly feelings for him which she thought were long buried rising up from the grave, despite her best efforts to stamp them down again. “Yeah, I’m surprised too. Turns out our old team aren’t too forgiving of those of us who choose to hail Hydra. I’d tell you to steer clear of them but that doesn’t seem like it’ll be an issue.”

Well, that answers the question of whether he plans to expose her. He knows perfectly well she not only knows of the team’s loyalties but shares them as well; he can’t very well help it given the talking-to she gave him while she was removing those stitches in his foot.

His eyes travel to the corners of her lab, taking it all in.

She wonders if he’s comparing it to Vault D and how it might compare from his perspective. She’s often thought how lucky she is to have at least the semblance of privacy. She has her lab where the rare guest visits her and her own room beyond it, as well as a private bathroom. There are cameras everywhere, she knows, even in that last room, but she chooses to ignore them.

Does Ward also consider her accommodations superior to his? Or is he thinking that they’re more than she deserves after she let him rot in that hole all this time? She can’t tell what he’s thinking at all; he’s still so unflinchingly relaxed.

“Agent Simmons is here for her own safety,” Bakshi says. He’s … afraid. She supposes that makes sense. Ward _is_ a dangerous man and he certainly looks it with that ragged beard and the clearly stolen jacket with the bloodstain on the front. Sadly, it doesn’t appear to be his.

Still, Bakshi is always so in control. Even when he comes to have her read his future, he does his best to be only cautious of what’s to come, not fearful of the uncertainty. It’s odd to feel true fear from him.

Ward’s smile sharpens when it lands on her, though not in a threatening way. It’s almost inviting. He wants to include her at the exclusion of Bakshi. “So it’s true?” he asks, his voice pitched as to be teasing. “You’re … clairvoyant?”

Even his own mirth isn’t enough to overcome her annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It kinda is though.”

All right, perhaps it _is_ enough to overcome her annoyance. She feels a smile tugging at her lips and a lightness in her chest that is a prelude to laughter.

This is why she’s here. The clairvoyance alone she might have handled but the invasive empathy was impossible. She didn’t know what it was, is the thing. All these feelings were crashing into her from all sides and she thought they were _hers—_ because how could they not be? Curiosity and apathy and disgust and hatred and lust and jealousy and it was all just _too much_. She’s glad Whitehall sedated her when he did, otherwise she might have gone truly mad.

One sharp crack of laughter escapes her and she slaps her hand over her mouth, forcing the rest back. She’s not amused. She’s _not_. It’s Ward who wants to laugh and she’s just feeding off of him.

(And she can’t ignore the very distinct possibility that all of this is getting to her and she’s teetering on the edge of real hysteria once more, despite Whitehall’s interference.)

Struggling to compose herself, she turns away. It does somewhat lessen her sense of their emotions, but not much. She can feel Bakshi’s mounting irritation and Ward’s-

Calm. He’s made himself calm again and again she feels it like it belongs to her.

“Perhaps it’s time we leave,” Bakshi says. “She doesn’t do well with company.”

“All right,” Ward says easily and she breathes in his steadiness, making it her own. “I just wanted to see how she was holding up.”

Bakshi’s sudden spike of anger is distant, visible to her but unable to truly touch her. She knows the cause of it right away when Ward’s fingers brush her arm.

“Hey,” he says and, before she can do more than face him, enfolds her in a warm hug.

On the Bus, Ward was never much of a hugger. Perhaps that was only another aspect of his cover’s endearing awkwardness because this hug just might be the best of her life. She hasn’t had one in _ages_ , not since the quick goodbye she gave to May before boarding the train to come here, and of late her only human contact has been Bakshi’s daily handshake. As a result, Ward’s hug quickly becomes almost too much. The warmth of another human body pressed to hers, the slight weight of him resting against her, the way her head tucks perfectly beneath his chin, the smell of sweat and cheap soap clinging to his skin.

The vision that sneaks in beneath it all is a welcome distraction.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he says into her hair. “I’ll be back to visit you soon, okay?” He pulls back, leaving her shaken after only a few seconds.

A few seconds? Was that really all it lasted? It felt like it lasted forever and she could easily have let it go on longer still.

She doesn’t know which part exactly has her struggling to find her composure, but once again she finds it in Ward. She sinks gratefully into his placid smile before turning to Bakshi to offer him their habitual handshake.

He hesitates. It’s unlike him after all this time but she opts not to comment on it.

“I’m sorry,” she says when he raises his eyebrow in question. “I don’t see anything.” It’s a common outcome of his visits and it’s not even a lie. She doesn’t see anything at all of Bakshi’s future when she shakes his hand. That she already knows what little remains of it from her hug with Ward, she keeps to herself.

*****

“Oh,” she pouts later, when Ward enters her lab. “I liked the beard.”

He smiles in response but he’s annoyed by something. Perhaps it’s the trouble he ran into on his way in. There is quite a lot of the guard’s blood splattered on her window.

“Bakshi’s dead,” he says while tapping at the keypad beside the door.

“I know.” He had the beard in her vision. What _has_ he been up to that he found time to shave between then and now?

Whatever it is, it has him terribly on edge. All his earlier calm has vanished and his present anticipation is already pounding in her ears.

As such, she’s more than a little let down when she hears the unmistakable sound of the door locking.

“We’re not leaving?” she asks.

“Twenty minutes ago Whitehall walked into a SHIELD trap. It’s chaos out there. We’re safer in here.” He removes his tac vest with practiced hands. The dark shirt he wears beneath it is very much like those he used to wear on the Bus and clings to his every muscle like a second skin. Some of that irritation he was wearing when he walked in eases.

“Coulson did send you.” She’d wondered. Why else would Ward choose not to expose her as the liar she so obviously is? Of course, she can’t fathom why he wouldn’t expose her _anyway_.

She reaches for the anger that fed her through months of training and months more of working alongside the enemy. It was her anger at _him_ that allowed her to do it all. And yet now, when she reaches for it, it feels distant compared to the swell of emotions rolling off of him. She almost can’t breathe through them all.

He anchors her with a hand on her shoulder. He’s so _big_ , just his hand feels heavy. Not oppressively so. More like … comforting. Like an extra blanket in winter.

“He’ll send his people in to clean up before anyone can take control of the situation, but if he’s smart he’ll let Hydra tear itself apart for a while first, make things easier on himself.” His hand is under her chin, inviting her to look at him while he talks. He’s so close, she can’t help thinking of that hug earlier and how easy it would be to repeat it now.

“So we have time,” she says.

This time his sharp smile is threatening, but only in the most promising of ways. Her blood pounds in her veins, anticipation and that old desire she felt for him driving each other up and up until she feels like she might burst with it. It’s been so long. She wants to touch him, to be held, she doesn’t care how.

Her coat hits the floor before she realizes she’s removed it.

“We have plenty of time,” Ward says. When he closes his mouth over hers, the satisfaction she feels reaches all the way to her toes.


End file.
